Читать книгу These are the British онлайн

79 страница из 108

In retrospect, the election of 1945 was one the Tories could not win. Almost everything was against them: the pre-war Tory government's appeasement of Germany, the military disasters of 1940, the distrust of Churchill in time of peace, his own exaggerated campaign attacks on Labor, the superb organization of the Labor Party machinery by Herbert Morrison. Ten years later the Conservatives faced an election they could not lose. Even when all other conditions are taken into account, this was a singular example of the adaptability and mobility of the Tories.

The Tories saw that the nation had changed, and they changed with it. Both the political philosophy of the party and the organization of the party were altered—the latter change being more drastic, more complete, and more rapid than the former.

In the organizational change the reports of the Committee on Party Organization in 1948 and 1949 were of paramount importance. The committee was headed by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, later Viscount Kilmuir and Lord Chancellor.